Why Aren't You Laughing?
by Taun-Taun
Summary: Promise is 10 years old. Her mother is an alcoholic. Her mother beats her daily. Promise's mother is coming up the stairs, carrying a skillet. What will happen when she meets a 16 year old boy with horrible wounds on his face? What if they fell in love?
1. Introduction

**A/N: Hello! I wrote this a couple years ago on another website. It's been revised and revised again, so don't worry, the grammar and word usage will improve! ^-^'**

Mommy says we're going on a trip in a few days, but I'm confused because the only place I've ever gone with her is to the hospital. Sometimes she gives me a really deep cut or she breaks one of my bones and she gets scared, so she takes me to the hospital.

I asked her if I would need my clothes. For the past few months she has only let me wear my dad's old flannel shirt that he left behind when he went away. She only smacked me and punched me in the stomach. I take that as a resounding no.

After that she made a promise that she would never keep. She always silly promises and I always let myself believe her. She said, "You can come out of the attic when dinner is ready, I promise." I haven't eaten in a few days and my head if cloudy so I took it all in. I fell into her lie and reveled in the fuzzy thought of food. It didn't even have to be warm or fresh, just food.

Dinner time came and went and the attic door stayed locked. When I look out of the little circular window and see that the sun was already starting to come up, I realize Mommy was lying again. I've been sitting in the dark for hours, waiting to hear the soft click of the lock turning.

I could've ran away. I could've the whole time Mommy was being mean. I tried that once when Mommy allowed me to wear pants. The police found me at 2am, wandering the streets of Gotham. When they brought me home, Mommy didn't even know I was gone. She smiled and thanked the officers and for a moment, I thought she realized how much she was hurting me. I thought she looked sorry for what she did to me. That night, she broke three of my ribs, sprained my ankle, and broke my nose. She told the doctor I had fallen down the library steps. Truth is, I don't even remember what the library looks like.

I once read in a book that your insides shut down after a week without food. Is it the same for a ten year old girl? Would it come sooner or later? Does it hurt?

The other day, I bit through the skin in my cheek to see if I would be able to feel anything. I found out later I could because Mommy caught me doing it. She punched me in my bad cheek and asked me why I did it. I couldn't find a good answer because I was so scared, so I said I was drinking my blood, because I was thirsty. She took me by my hair and dragged me down the attic steps to the bathroom where she dunked my head in the scummy, yellow toilet that hadn't been cleaned since Daddy left. She kept yelling, "Are you still thirsty? Huh? Are you quenched yet?" Then she made another promise. It's the only promise I can trust her on. She said, "You won't be thirsty from now on, I promise." For the past few days, she's been dunking my head in the toilet. And everytime she does I take giant gulps of water. Afterwards, I throw up into a corner of the attic. But now I'm never thirsty.

It doesn't help very much with the hunger. What I would give for a cracker or a crumb of cheese. Or both! But if I were offered a full plate of food, I wouldn't touch it for fear that Mommy cooked it with soap or the dog's shit. What could possibly stop her? She's done them both before.

There is a boy outside. He's walking down the dark street. I wonder what he's doing and where he's going. He has patches on his face. A white patch on each cheek. I like those patches. They remind me that there are other people with their own problems. I wonder how he got those patches. I want to know his story.


	2. My Unfinished Biography

Mommy's unlocking the door. She's screaming something but her words are so slurred I can't understand anything she's saying at all. I'm scared because she sounds angry.

"Our trip has been changed to another date," she says as she climbs the stairs, tripping over one. She's carrying a skillet.

"When?" I ask. I stand from the corner of the attic where I carved the first chapter of my autobiography into the wood wall. I figure if I am to die up here, I'll leave my story here for the police to see. Then Mommy won't be able to say I fell down the stairs or I got into a fight at school (even though I'm not registered to any school) to explain my deep blue bruises and oozing scabs.

"Today."

She raises the skillet over her head and it comes down hard on my skull. I fall to the floor as thick liquid runs down my cheek and pools around my head. She stands over me, watching the opaque liquid run into my eye and on my lip.

And then.

Nothing.

Joker's PoV  
I've just caused the biggest pile up in Gotham history! It's truly amazing what one can do with two toy guns and a can of black spray paint. A few blocks from here on a busy main street, I ran into the street as cars zoomed past and I simply held up the toy guns. One driver slammed on the brakes, his car turning sideways. Then he was t-boned by another car. That car was hit by another car and in the end, a total of 21 cars all driving at 45+ miles per hour came to an abrupt stop all because of me.

It was a ripple effect. One small event grew into a colossal disaster.

"Holy shit!" I yell as a green Taurus skids past me over in the empty pavement. "Watch it, dick weed!"

Screaming after the car hurts my cheeks. Like, a lot. I feel the bandage on my right cheek and look at my fingers, stained with dark red blood.

"Great," I sigh. These things will never go away if I don't stop the bullshit.

The green Taurus stops two blocks up and panic rises in my throat. Getting beat up is not on my agenda tonight.

The passanger door opens and a limp body spills out onto the sidewalk. The panic subsides and I chuckle at the body, relieved it's just a normal body drop-off. I walk in it's direction, figuring I'll spray a smile on it's face when the car speeds away. When I'm about a block from it, I see that the body is far too small to be an adult's.

"This could be more fun than I thought," I say to myself, breaking into a run.

I reach the body, finding it's a girl. Nine or ten years old at the most. She has long black hair that is matted to her scalp with dried brown blood and she's wearing a blue flannel. She has a black eye and a bruised cheek. I walk around her and my smiles fades. She isn't wearing any underwear.

The sane part of me, or what's left of it, takes over then.

My PoV  
I wake up in a strange room. It's old and dirty. I'm laying on an old, yellow mattress on the floor that smells like sweat and mold and cigarettes. I sit up quickly and look around the room. The wallpaper is old and peeling. There are a few wooden crates on the floor and an armoire that seems ancient. The ceiling is spotted with dripping yellow pimples where it leaks rain water onto the ruined rug.

Is this the trip? I think, stepping out of the sheets that cover me. There is a paper crunch under my foot that startles me back under the covers, huddled into myself. I stay for a few seconds, fighting the urge to scream. I look out again, finding a little brown paper bag. Inside is a pair of panties in a plastic package from the store. I slip them on and move my hips, immediately regretting ever having put them on. They're soft, with a little ribbon bow on the front, but they're constrictive. I suppose months of being without underwear has changed my perspective on them.

I step into the dark hall and follow my ears. There is a sound of feet in a room to my right. With moonlight pouring through the partially boarded windows I have just enough light to make my way around. The door is open a crack and suddenly a light turns on inside. I recoil towards a railing to a flight of stairs that lead to a level below. The door swings open and a sillhouette stands on the other side. A watery squeak escapes my lips and I run back to the room I woke up in, slamming the door behind me. My heart is pounding so hard, I figure the person can hear it outside my door. I sit in the room for hours in fear that the door will open and the figure will hurt me. Eventually I fall asleep again without a single dream.

Sunlight flows through the cracks in the boarded windows when I wake. The door opens a crack and a small, blue plastic package falls into the room.

"I figured you might be hungry," a deep male voice says. "I got that for you."

"How long have I been here?" I ask, my voice dry and meek.

"2 days."

That's it. It's been a full week since I've eaten. I must be dying.

The door closes and I run over to the little blue package, trying with everything in me to tear the plastic and get to the marshmallow treat inside. I can't, though. It just won't open. I begin to cry and growl in frustration. The tears are hot against my cheeks as they roll to my chin and drop on the floor. A strange thought comes to my head then and I can't help but laugh at it.

"I haven't eaten in a full week and now that I have food, I can't even eat it!" I say to myself. The laughter grows and I fall onto the mattress. After a while, the laughter settles. The hunger pangs in my stomach come again and I roll onto my side. Soon, I'm crying again.  
After 10 minutes, when I'm completely calm, I try again to open the package, my hands shaking with excitement.

Suddenly, it's open. But there is no treat inside. Not anymore. I ate it in two bites. But I'm still hungry.

I sit in the room for a few hours, the house completely silent. When there is a noise downstairs, I emerge from the room to find whomever gave me the food. I walk down the rotting steps, the third swallowing my foot. I give a yelp and force it back out, a splinter plunging into the soft flesh of my ankle. I walk carefully down the rest of the stairs and into a foyer that might've been nice thirty or so years ago.

"Hello?" I call. My brother, Robby, used to listen to a song by Pink Floyd called Comfortably Numb. This is how it went: "Hello? Is anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me?" I shout into the house.

"Is there anyone home?" says the voice from before, finishing my quote. I turn around quickly, almost making myself dizzy, to see a boy. The boy. From the other day. The one with the patches on his face. The one I'd admired so much before.

"What's your name?" he says, smiling like a pack of dogs before raw meat.  
I begin to wonder if I should tell a complete stranger my name. That is what grown-ups usually tell kids, right? Not to tell strangers your name? I'll give him a fake one, I think, Like a nickname.

One time, Mommy and Daddy took me to an arcade. It was supposed to be really fun; a day just for us. But Mommy and Daddy ended up fighting the whole time. Mommy told me to stay while she talked to Daddy in the car.

"Stay right here and I'll be back in just a few minutes, I promise. Don't talk to anyone you don't know," she had said.

I stayed where she left me for three hours, wondering when she was going to come back. A man with a teddy bear came to me and asked me if I wanted it. I didn't answer him. Mommy told me not to talk to people I didn't know, and I was sure this man was a stranger.

"Don't be afraid," the man said. "Your mom told me to take you home. She and your daddy got into an accident and they sent me to pick you up."

"Are they okay?" I asked, oblivious to his lie.

"They're fine, but you have to come with me."

I began walking with the man. He took me outside and we were heading to his car when I heard my name. I looked around.

It was mommy, perfectly fine. Her head poking out of the window of her car.

"What are you doing?" she screamed, opening her door and running to us.

The man grabbed my arm and began tugging me. I was scared, so I shrieked and pulled away from him. He opened the back door to his car and tried pulling me in, but I bit his arm, locking my jaws as hard as I could. He yelled and threw me on the ground.

My mom was there then. She picked me up and told me to go to the car. I ran, but I heard my mommy punching the man, and the man shouting at her to stop.

She came to the car and sat in the driver's seat. Daddy was gone.

"He took the bus home," she said, as if she could read my mind.

She lit a cigarette.

"I won't let anyone else hurt you," she said. "I promise."

A week later Daddy left us and Mommy started drinking alcohol everyday and hitting me.

"Promise," I say. "My name is Promise."

For all the promises my mother never kept.

The boy's grin fades after a second, as though he was thinking very hard. "You can call me... Joker," he says, and I get a sense that he just made the name up now like I did.

"Why do you want me to call you Joker?" I say, scrunching my nose as though the name stinks.

"Why do you want me call you Promise?" he asks, backing me into a mental wall.

_Touché._

I shake my head.

"So then, I take it you'll be staying?" he sits on the steps, propping himself up on his elbows.

"So long as you're here," I say. His face contorts in confusion. "I like your patches," I say, touching my cheeks, "I'm not the only one with problems, you know?"

He raises his hand to his cheek and stares at the floor. He stands suddenly and starts towards me, his hand in his pocket. He gets a little too close for comfort and I begin backing away from him. Pretty soon, I'm pressed into a corner. His hand emerges from his pocket holding a blue boxcutter. "You wanna know how I got these patches?" he says, brushing a strand of blood-stained hair from my face with the razor.

My heart is pounding and dispite it, I can utter one small word. "Yes."

"Good," he says, his left hand holding the back of my neck firmly. His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip.

"I haven't slept for 3 months because of horrific nightmares. Cannibals with big frowning faces, full of sharp teeth. They'd chase me at top speed but my legs wouldn't work. I'd watch as they picked my flesh from my bones piece by piece. I stopped sleeping entirely after the doctor wouldn't give me meds. So I figured, so long as I'm happy, the frowning faces will go away. I'll be free.

"I put this razor in my mouth," he slips the razor between my lips and touches it to my left cheek, making me gasp, "and I ripped it through my skin. Now, as you can see, I have a permanent smile. But the fucking faces don't go away," he says through gritted teeth. After a moment, his face relaxes and he slips the razor out of my mouth. He sits on the steps again and drops his head in his hands. I sit next to him and fold my arms.

"That's it?" I ask.

"What?" he looks at me through narrowed eyes.

"If I hadn't met you today would've been a full week that I haven't eaten anything. The only thing I've been drinking is toilet water and my own blood. I've broken both my arms, my right leg, three fingers on my left hand, and all but 2 of my ribs. I have been abused, neglected, and abandoned and the only thing I've ever done to myself is bitten through the skin of my cheek."

He was staring at me with a grin again.

"You have a few bad dreams and suddenly, your life is shit?"

"What are you getting at, toots?" he says, his grin becoming wider. I stare straight in his eyes. They're chocolate brown.

"There's still plenty of sanity left in you."

**A/N: Honestly, I hate revising old stories. It hurts to see how poorly I used to write!** **And I see how many people have read the first chapter, yet mysteriously, there are no reviews... Odd! please review!**


	3. Funny Carvings and Nightmare Men

I'm in the attic and the door is locked. Hunger burns a hole in my stomach. There is a rustle behind me and I turn, finding Joker standing there, smiling. I smile back but it quickly fades. Something is wrong. He's smiling wide. So wide, his patches begin bleeding and his eyes are bulging out of his head, bloodshot and big. Blood starts to drip down from the patches, staining his cheeks red. A series of knocks rattle the door. They turn into pounds and the door seems to struggle to stay on its hinges. It slams open to reveal Mommy on the other side. She's smiling, too, really wide, her eyes protruding from their sockets. She hits me on the head with a skillet and I fall to the floor. A warm, sticky fluid flows down my face. Three other faces join them forming a circle around me. These faces, though, aren't smiling. They're frowning with big, ugly teeth that drip tendrils of blood on me. Their skin is jaundiced and their fingers are tipped with sharp claws. The five of them reach down to me with malevolent hands and I feel a strip of skin and meat being ripped from my body with a sick, wet peel. The burning pain runs up the wound and sends a shrill scream from my mouth.

I wake with a start, sitting straight up on the mattress. I look around, fear filling every inch of my body. I can see the frowning people from my dream in the dark corners. My imagination makes them clear and helps them to move. I run out of the room and into the hall, knocking repetitively on Joker's door. He opens it to find me, tears streaming down my face.

"What'sa matter, doll face?" he asks, moving to the side to let me in.

"I had a bad dream," I say, wiping at the tears that I hadn't noticed until just now. The room is dark and I don't know where he is until his hand grabs mine, pulling me to my left.

"C'mon," he says and I can make out his shape in the dark, lying down on a mattress. I lie down next to him and he pulls the blanket up to my chin.

"I thought you said you didn't sleep," I say, but he doesn't answer. Instead, he wraps his right arm around me, pulling me close. His breathing slows against my back and I feel comfort fall over me in his bed and in his hold.

I wake up early and in an empty bed. There is a little sunlight coming through the window, helping me to see my surroundings. It's much like my room. Mattress on the floor, crates (his are all pushed into a pile in the corner.) The one thing that sticks out most of all is carvings. There are carvings all over the walls but my vision is blurry and I can't make out what it says. I sit up and stretch, rubbing my eyes. I look up and my jaw drops at what I see.

Carved into all four walls is HA HA HA HA over and over, everywhere. It's written on the little lamp's shade in marker and carved into the floor right in front of me. I stand up and start for the door, breaking into a run. I want out, and fast. I turn the knob but it's locked.

_I'm trapped!_, I think. _I'll be in here forever. It's no better than Mommy._

I run back to the bed and lay under the blanket, pulling it over my head. I run to the general direction of the door with the blanket still over my face, running into it instead. The knob slams into my pelvis, most likely bruising me. I pound on the door, calling for the Joker to come let me out. I feel a sharp pain in my knuckle and each knock becomes blood-stained, but I don't stop. I knock and knock, screaming at the top of my lungs and crying for a full hour before I crawl back into the bed, pretending Joker's arm is still around me.

The HA's scare me; I don't want to see them. I want out of this room. I lay awake for two hours under the blanket before I hear a click in the door knob. I stand up quickly, running to the door and pulling it open, Joker standing on the other side.

"Why did you leave me here, locked in this stupid room, you jerk?" I yell, hitting him with fists and crying. He gathers me in his arms, enclosing my flailing arms against my body.

"I was just out getting you some food. C'mon."

He leads me down the stairs and I follow, especially cautious of the third step which I had caved in before. He brings me into the kitchen where the table is completely covered by candy and cakes he must have stolen.

"It took me a long time to get all of this," he said, tossing me a cookie. "I was caught twice."

"Why did you lock the door?" I ask, eating the cookie and drinking from an apple juice box.

"I had to make sure you didn't follow me. I'm always out doing dangerous stuff. I don't want you getting hurt because I'm having a little fun." His breath lasts longer than the sentence.

"I promise I won't go with you if you don't want me to. But you have to promise never to lock me in a room again."

"Alright, I promise," he says licking his lips.

"What do you promise?" I ask, folding my arms in front of my chest.

"I promise not to lock you in my room anymore."

I eat until I'm full, the feeling of emptiness in my stomach relieved. Joker takes me out for "a little fun" as he calls it. We're taking back alleys and side streets to get where ever it is that he wants to go.

Suddenly, he stops. We're still on a side street but this one has a view of a bridge over water.  
"What time is it?" he asks. I've never owned a watch and had to teach myself how to tell time using the sun. It's positioned between one and two.

"It's about one thirty. Why?"

"Get down," he says, baring all his teeth in a big grin. I duck behind a guard rail and hug my knees to my chest.

"Joker, what's goi-"

I am cut off by a sharp crack and a boom that makes the ground shake and my ears pop. I look over the rail to see the old bridge exploding, sending smoke and debris into the water below. Men in bright orange vests run away from the explosion and I can hear them shouting. Joker is laughing hysterically, holding his sides and doubling over. I can't believe it! Joker just blew up a bridge for no reason at all!

"You blew up a bridge?" I yell, standing up and stepping towards him.

"No! I didn't blow it up; it was already gonna be blown up. I just added a little something extra!" he says, smiling wide and bursting into laughter again. I roll my eyes and hope he's telling the truth.

It goes on like this for months, setting structure fires, robbing corner stores, popping police cruiser tires. Even sleeping in his room continues; the HAs don't bother me while he's around. His cheeks heal and he doesn't need the patches anymore. He's always trying to cover the scars, even joking about wearing a brown paper bag over his head from now on. We're each other's best friend, brother, sister, mother, father, lover, teacher. All we have is each other.

That is, until we're caught.

**A/N: Oh, taun-taun, you fiend! How could you leave us with this "cliff hanger" malarkey? Do we, the readers, have an ear full for you, which we will promptly leave on the review page! -shifty eyes-**

**Okay, so I'm not fooling anyone, I know. Please review! It really helps me know who will continue reading and who's just passing through, looking for a good fic to pass their time with. Thanks for reading!**


	4. Terminal Boredom

"Promise! Run! Fucking run!" Joker shouts. It's the last thing I hear him say for the next several years. It's the last thing I remember of our final night out. It's my only sense of hope I have for the future.

***  
We are bored. Terminally bored. And when we get bored, we go out and wreak havoc. But this time, we are more bored than ever before. So we plan something really big and really fun to do.

Two hours later we're at an abandoned warehouse, setting up twenty-seven barrels of gasoline . We had hijacked a semitruck from a rest stop and used to it to haul the barrels to this huge factory that had shut down before I was born. Jack is connecting the last fuse as I gather our things to leave.

Joker opens the door first, an excited smile for the explosion to come. But he closes it immediately and the smile disappears. I look at him, confused.

"What is it?" I ask.

"I want you to run," he says, his face stern and serious.

"Why? What's out there?" I ask, worry rising in my throat.

"Just run, Promise." His eyes are determined, showing no sense of fear, but I feel panic rising in my stomach. "When I tell you to, you run."

He puts his hand on my head and nods; a silent "Are you ready?"

I nod back and take in a gulp of air. He opens the door slowly, revealing a crowd of police officers. A spotlight lands on us and I'm temporarily blinded.

"We have the warehouse surrounded. Put your hands on your heads and step away from the building," a man on a megaphone says.

Everything is silent as the cops wait for us to make a move. Joker's warm hand clasps mine. I look up at him and he whispers a single word to me.

"Run."

His hand fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve while still holding mine. I don't look down directly but instead, use my peripheral vision to see a pair of knives hidden in the sleeve of his gray sweater. He takes off, ripping the spotlight from me as it followed his figure, running toward the crowd. He swings a knife-wielding hand and everything slows. Adrenaline builds in me, filling me, urging me to sprint my way back to the house.

Six police officers are running towards me, the rest to catch the Joker.

Suddenly, there's nothing.

Blackness.

And those four words.

"Promise! Run! Fucking run!"

When I come to, I'm at our house. My shirt is covered with blood and upon further inspection of my body, I find none of it seems to be mine. I spend a day in only my panties, waiting for the shirt to dry after I washed out all the red.

I learn through a tv displayed in a store window that the Joker pled innocent due to insanity. He was sent to Arkham Mental Institution with a 10 year sentence. When he was asked about "the approximately ten year old girl who escaped the scene" he only replied, "I'll never tell, I promise."I live the way Joker taught me, robbing stores and setting structure fires just to pass the time. There are only two changes in my life.

One, I couldn't sleep. I wanted to sleep, but if I did, I would have a panic attack, hyperventilating and passing out for hours more. The Nightmare Men as I called them, still plagued me.

The second change would effect my life with the Joker forever. A justice-bringing, utility belt wearing, masked vigilante whom everyone calls the Batman. I've only met him once but I have a feeling he'll always be in my way, always watching my moves.

It was October and the air was cold and raw. Being a squatter, my house had no heat and I had run out of dry crates to burn a while ago. I only had the flannel shirt which, by then, was ragged and moth-eaten. What's the point of keeping it? I was 15 and blossoming. I couldn't continue to wear it for my own health and safety.

I went out, found the richest-looking lady in Gotham, took all her clothes and left her with the ratty blue flannel I wore for five years. I had absolutely no post-partum depression.

I turned out the alley, clad in my new, sweet-smelling coat and clothes, when a hand pulls me back in. It was the Batman and all his self-proclaimed glory. He held me against the brick wall of the building and off the ground by the collar of the coat. I kicked and whinced but he was too strong. Fighting back was only a waste of energy. I spent two years in and out of a jail cell. And do you know what I had to wear while I was there? You guessed it. The blue flannel shirt.

When I got out, the shirt was torn and tattered as it had lived through many fights and rape attempts. The liutenant there, James something or other, decided it was a good punishment to let "the clothes thief" wear what she's trying to get rid of.

I, nearly 17 and almost an adult, went back to the abandoned house. For two months, I didn't sleep or eat until I fainted at least twice, then I would cautiously steal something and eat it alone. I was torturing myself not out of self-loathe or masochistic dreaming, but out of boredom.

There is a noise downstairs; someone is trying to get in through the front door. It could be cops, it could be other squatters, or it could be... Well, there's two-thirds of a chance that it's an enemy of mine. I grab one of the several knives Joker had left behind and quietly make my way down the stairs, avoiding the four broken steps by nature. I stand next to the door, readying myself to attack. I turn the latch on the door and it bursts open, a man tripping inside. I lunge, pushing the intruder against the door, the knife at his throat. He had silly makeup, a red smile painted across his cheeks. On his chest is a patterned purple shirt under a green vest and a heavy purple tailcoat.

"Promise," he mutters, taking off the tailcoat and slipping it over my shoulders. I stare at the man, looking past the makeup and finding a face so familiar. The coat smells just like him. I feel my heart skip a beat.

"J... Joker?" I hiccup.

I let hot tears spill down my cheeks and I drop the knife. It makes a hollow thunk on the floor. I fall into him, hugging him and sobbing. His arms wrap around me and I feel his head rest on the crown of mine. And without warning, for the first time in months I fall asleep, standing there with my only friend.

**A/N: Sorry this one kind of took long compared to the others. I want to post at least one chapter everyday. There are 27 chapters posted elsewhere, so it won't be a really long story.  
But there is a sequel. Whether or not I get reviews dictates whether or not I post it. :)**


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